More than 200 students from the graduating classes of 2009-12 returned to Harker’s upper school campus during their winter break for the informal annual alumni event Home for the Holidays.
The college-aged alumni were joined by more than 30 faculty and staff members for the Jan. 2 gathering held in the Nichols Hall atrium, which was decorated with balloons in school colors and bouquets of flowers in “Harker Alumni” tumblers.
More than two dozen of the alumni present at the event were “K-Lifers,” having attended Harker from kindergarten through the upper school. They were especially enjoying reconnecting with old friends during the gathering. Others noted how well Harker had prepared them for the academic rigors of university life.
MaryEllis Deacon, director of alumni relations, said she was pleased to see how welcome alumni had been made to feel on their visit, which began with faculty and staff greeting them as they arrived on campus. Before gathering in the atrium later in the day, many alumni sat in on classes, played sports on Davis Field and ate lunch in the Edge with old friends.
Seeing the Edge again reminded Cindy Tay ’12, a current student at Duke University, of special times spent simply hanging out, including “one lazy afternoon, talking and eating tangerines with friends in the bistro.”
“We want our alumni to know they are always welcome here, and to keep in touch. We hope Harker will continue to be a part of their extended family … a community to return to, and a home away from home,” said Deacon.
Harker athletes are rebounding, wrestling and running the legs off their opponents as the winter athletic season comes into its own!
Basketball Girls basketball lost for only the second time this year in a tough game against 10th-ranked Menlo last Friday. Daniza Rodriguez, grade 12, scored 12 points, and Nithya Vemireddy, grade 11, added another 12 points with six rebounds. In their league opener Tuesday against King’s Academy they won 66-49. Rodriguez scored 24 points; Priscilla Auyeung, grade 12, 19; and Vemireddy added 14. The girls travel to ICA today, Thursday, to build on their 11-2 record.
Boys basketball defeated Menlo on Friday night in front of a boisterous home crowd at Blackford to start league play at 1-0. For his play against the Knights, junior Will Deng was named player of the game. Deng racked up 16 points and nine rebounds in the win. They improved to 8-4 overall, 2-0 in league with their 58-49 win over Pinewood Tuesday. Nikhil Panu, grade 12, scored 15 points and Eric Holt, grade 10, had 11 points. The boys host Priory tomorrow night, Friday, at Blackford: 5:30 JV and 7 p.m. varsity.
Wrestling
Harker wrestling competed in the Cupertino tournament this past weekend. Ethan Ma, grade 10, went 1-1, while Vincent Lin, grade 11, went 1-2, and Daniel Wang, grade 12, went 0-2. Darian Edvalson, grade 11, went 2-2 and made it to the consolation finals, where he lost a close match for a medal, 7-5.
Soccer Girls soccer opened league play with a 4-0 win over Eastside College Prep. Sondra Leal Da Costa, grade 12, scored three goals, and Gabi Gupta, grade 10, added the other. Come watch them today in a big game v. Pinewood as they try to improve upon their 2-4 record! Boys soccer defeated ECP yesterday 3-1. Maverick McNealy, grade 12, scored twice for the Eagles and classmate Sumit Minocha scored as well. The boys improved to 3-1 overall and travel to Menlo tomorrow.
American history came alive for Harker’s eldest middle school students, who traveled to Washington, D.C., on their class trip in October.
Students on the annual grade 8 sojourn to D.C. quickly realized that it’s one thing to learn about history from text, and quite another to be able to actually journey through historical hot spots. During the trip, they acquired a new appreciation for the city, founded on July 16, 1790, and established by the Constitution of the United States to serve as the nation’s capital.
Accompanied on the trip by Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs, the group’s D.C. adventure began with a smooth day of travel followed by a visit to Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg.
Even before arriving in Jamestown, the students knew much of the background of the first permanent English settlement in North America, having learned about it in their history class. Yet, while on site, they were able to more fully understand how the early settlers prepared food and made clothes, and the types of living quarters they had.
The students then visited Colonial Williamsburg, an interpretation of a colonial American city. Highlights of their time there included visiting the capitol, the court and the governor’s palace. They also visited a variety of shops such as the wig maker and the apothecary before heading for lunch at the King’s Arm Tavern, a recreation of a restaurant once considered one of the town’s most refined establishments.
After lunch, students participated in an interactive African-American music program held in a slave quarter in Colonial Williamsburg, where they were actively singing and dancing right alongside presenters.
The following day the contingent was greeted by gorgeous autumn weather, the perfect backdrop for their drive to Pamplin Park, one of America’s best-preserved battlefields. The students first went to the Civil War museum on the park grounds where they learned, via an audio guided tour, about the lives of soldiers who fought in the Civil War. Students also participated in military drills and visited the park’s recreated military encampment, experiencing elements of a common soldier’s life.
From there they visited the Martin Luther King Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Korean War Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial. Making this visit more poignant was the fact that there were several Harker students and teachers who had family members who had fought in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
The day was capped off by a lively dinner at Tony Chang’s, filled with fun, delicious food, and interesting information and dialogue. A special treat was having former Harker student Amira Valliani ’06 attend as a guest speaker. Valliani is a former White House intern who currently serves as the special assistant to the deputy chief of staff at the U.S. State Department, where she works in the Office of Secretary of State. She spoke to Harker students about what she does and how the state department functions within the executive branch.
Valliani was joined by Harker classmate Amit Mukherjee ’06, who is a venture capitalist working in Washington, D.C. Mukherjee spoke of his experiences at Harker and how they led to his personal and professional development.
The following day, unusually warm and sunny, turned more solemn as the class visited the Iwo Jima U.S. Marine Corps memorials, Arlington Cemetery, Fords’ Theater and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which contains a record number of archival documents.
From there the group enjoyed a guided tour of the exterior of the White House, including seeing the tent of Concepcion Picciotto, who has been living on the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue in a peace camp in protest of nuclear arms since 1981.
“While we did not see Ms. Picciotto, we did see her delegate. On a lighter note, many of the students were also able to spot a basketball on the lawn of the White House, which they presumed was used by President Obama,” recalled Gargano.
Students later enjoyed a wonderful dinner at the Capitol Hill Club, one of the most popular locations in Washington for lawmakers, government officials and other political figures to socialize and gather. After dinner, students visited the World War II memorial, the FDR memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, and the Lincoln Memorial, which are beautifully lit in the evenings.
The next day included a memorial visit to Ford’s Theater where students learned about what occurred on the day of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and were able to view the balcony where he was shot.
The group ended their excursion by attending the opening night of “War Horse” at the Kennedy Center. The students were amazed by the realistic puppetry and touched by the story of a boy and his undying loyalty to his horse.
Towards the end of the trip, students visited the capitol building, touring the House of Representatives, the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court. Capping off the day – and trip – was a dinner dance cruise, where the class fully bonded as a group. The expedition ended the next day with a visit to Mount Vernon and Udvar Hazy Air and Space Annex before students headed off to the airport for their return flights home.
The grade 8 visit to Washington, D.C., was one of several weeklong middle school class trips held during the fall. Grade 6 went to the Santa Cruz Mountains and grade 7 toured national parks around the Southwest.
The semifinalists, all grade 12, are Paulomi Bhattacharya (“A Novel AAA-ATPase p97/VCP Inhibitor Lead for Multiple Myeloma by Fragment-Based Drug Design: A Computational Binding Model and NMR/SPR-Based Validation”), Deniz Celik (“Computation of the Cell Phone-Induced SAR Distribution in a 3D Multi-Layered Model of the Human Head/Brain using Finite Element Analysis”), Jenny Chen (“RNAi of Rec12 in Schizosaccharomyces pombe: The Effect of Meiotic Recombination Inhibition on Fungicide Resistance”), who performed all of her research at Harker, Andrew Luo (“The Kinematics of Andromeda’s Diffuse Ionized Gas Disk”), Payal Modi (“Understanding the Chemical Inhomogeneities in Globular Clusters: Examining M4 and M5 for Trends in Elemental Abundances”) and Ashvin Swaminathan (“Surreal Analysis: An Analogue of Real Analysis for Surreal Numbers”).
A total of 26 students submitted projects for this year’s contest, each student spending countless hours doing research, writing and refining in preparation, with much help and encouragement from their mentor teachers in Harker’s science department.
“We could not be more proud that our students were recognized for the culminating efforts of their entire research process,” said Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs. “The process reflects so much of who we strive to be – our students putting forth great efforts to deeply learn about and understand a topic they are truly interested in.”
The semifinalists each received a $1,000 prize and a chance to head to Washington, D.C., for the final stages of the contest, the winner of which will receive $100,000. More information about the semifinalists will appear on Society for Science’s Facebook page in the coming weeks. The finalists will be announced Jan. 23.
Technological learning was in full swing for the lower school’s grade 5 class during a recent class field trip to the Intel Museum.
This past October, fifth graders visited the museum, conveniently located near Harker at Intel headquarters in Santa Clara. The museum has exhibits of Intel’s products and history as well as semiconductor technology in general.
The museum got its start in the early 1980s as an internal project to record Intel history. It opened to the public in 1992, and was expanded in 1999 to triple its size and add a store. Today the museum has exhibits about how semiconductor chip technology works and is a popular destination for gradeschool educational programs. Intel is especially relevant to many students at Harker, who live in the area or have parents who work in Silicon Valley’s high tech industry.
Lisa Diffenderfer, an assistant director of instructional technology at Harker, said that prior to the outing students had been shown an interactive presentation on “Writing Good Emails.” Viewed on a projector as a whole class activity, the lesson (via a journey with Gmail) taught students what occurs when you send out an email. Taking a behind-the-scenes look at what happens “after you click send,” the students were treated to an insider’s view of data centers through videos, photos and more.
Both the interactive classroom presentation and field trip provided informative and fun ways to get students plugged into and invested in learning more about the quickly growing, ever changing, increasingly global world of high tech.
Each year the lower school Service and Spirit Club sells “snowman-grams” on all three of Harker’s campuses in an effort to promote holiday cheer and raise funds for various causes. Sold during the month of December for a dollar apiece, the ‘grams are delivered with a small bag of candy and an optional note to the Harker recipient of choice at the lower, middle and upper schools.
An annual contest is held amongst the fourth and fifth graders to select a handful of drawings that will be used for the ‘grams. This year Service and Spirit Club moderators reported having received 22 entries, of which they selected five winners. The winners were: grade 4 students Vidya Jeyendran, Sofia Fernandez and Ruya Ozveren, and grade 5 students Jasmine Wiese and Aarzu Gupta.
Last year the money raised by the ‘grams paid for racks outside of the gym lobby where grades 4-5 leave their belongings while at lunch or during assemblies. This year, the $636 raised was donated towards Superstorm Sandy relief efforts.
There was plenty of good cheer to go around during a special holiday celebration for alumni called Santa’s Winter Wonderland.
About 50 people – including Harker alumni, their families, faculty and staff – joined Santa Claus (played by upper school English teacher Jason Berry) recently for a pre-Christmas gathering held at the lower school.
Santa talked to and read stories to the children of alumni, as well as made crafts with them, before explaining that he had to leave to take gifts back to the elves and Mrs. Claus.
According to MaryEllis Deacon, director of alumni relations, the children worked on crafts under the supervision of members of the Student Alumni Relations group (STAR). Art projects included ornament designing, platemaking using reindeer or elves decorations, and doing drawings from holiday coloring books.
“Alumni had a great time seeing people they hadn’t in years, and shared a wonderful morning bringing in the holiday season with their extended Harker family,” Deacon recalled.
A contingent of Harker students had the unique opportunity to hear six-time Olympic medalist, motivational speaker and foundation founder Jackie Joyner-Kersee give the keynote address at this year’s local YWCA luncheon.
A longtime supporter of the YWCA of Silicon Valley’s annual luncheon event, Harker has regularly hosted a table for upper school students who have a special passion for that year’s topic.
As one of the most decorated female athletes of all time, Joyner-Kersee serves as a role model for girls and women alike. She dominated the track and field circuit for 13 years and won three gold, one silver and two bronze medals, spanning four Olympic games during her illustrious career.
The YWCA’s 21st annual luncheon was held in October at the Santa Clara Convention Center, with event proceeds supporting the group’s much lauded services. Each year, more than 40 companies and hundreds of individuals sponsor the YWCA’s luncheon. Past speakers have included Isabelle Allende, Gloria Steinem, Sally Ride, Janet Reno and Mary Lou Retton. Next year’s keynote address with Dr. Jane Goodall is anticipated to draw a sell-out crowd.
Harker students this year had the good fortune to meet with former Olympic medalists Anne Warner Cribbs and Marilyn King, who were special guests at the event. Cribbs won a gold medal for swimming and King was a two-time Olympian in the grueling five event Pentathlon.
The mission of the YWCA is to empower women, children and families, and to eliminate racism, hatred and prejudice. The organization provides programs in the areas of sexual assault intervention and prevention, counseling services, domestic violence, child care, youth programs, family services, and social and racial justice.
The YWCA serves nearly 18,000 Santa Clara County residents each year, and has provided services across the county for more than 100 years. More information can be found at www.ywca-sv.org.
Upper School
Varsity Basketball Aloha! Both boys and girls varsity basketball teams traveled to Maui over the holiday break and came away undefeated. The girls earned victories over Seabury Hall (twice) and Kamehameha-Maui while the boys defeated Kamehameha, Molokai and Seabury Hall. The girls now hold an impressive 9-1 record
Soccer
Sophomore Jeremiah Anderson had a goal and an assist in the 3-1 boys varsity soccer victory over KIPP Collegiate as the team improved to 2-1 overall. Kiran Arimilli and Kevin Moss also scored for the Eagles. The boys face ECP next Wednesday.
Wrestling Our wrestlers competed over the holiday break against Milpitas High with Junior Vincent Lin earning his first high school victory. Trailing 9-5 on the scoreboard Vincent got a reversal and pinned his opponent with 30 seconds left on the clock. Junior Darian Edvalson won with a dominating performance leading 8-0 before pinning his opponent in the second period. The team competes at the Cupertino High Tournament this weekend.
Volleyball Harker freshman Shannon Richardson participated in the USA High Performance Junior Beach Holiday Camp held at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista from Jan. 2-5 in the Girls’ A1/A2 Select group. The only players invited were those that had qualified for the High Performance program through rigorous tryouts in June of 2012 and participated in camp and championships last summer. Richardson and her partner took first place in the U15 division of the High Performance Championships. This is Richardson’s fourth invitation and visit to the Olympic Training Center since June of 2011.
Middle School
Soccer The grade 7-8 varsity A girls soccer team finished the season as league champions with an undefeated 11-0 record. The team finished off the season with exciting, close victories over Castilleja and King’s Academy to preserve the perfect record. Lyndsey Mitchell and Joelle Anderson, both grade 8, went home with the team’s Co-MVP Award, while Anuva Mittal, grade 8, and Anuja Shah, grade 7, each won the Eagle Award and Maile Chung and Stephanie Scaglia, both grade 8, were given the Coaches Award. Congratulations to the whole team, led by coaches Chrissy Chang, CJ Cali and Allison Burzio, on a banner season!
The grade 6 junior varsity A girls soccer team, coached by Cyrus Merrill, Rafeh Akram and Miles Brown, finished the season at 0-7. Despite the lopsided record, the girls made significant improvements to their game as the season progressed, which should bode well for their future soccer careers with Harker. In particular, the girls have developed an excitement for the game, leading to passionate and dynamic play even in defeat. With an eye toward continuing to improve their skills, many on the team have tried out for and plan to play on outside club soccer teams. The team had two very tight games with Nueva and Girls Middle School – their best chances at a victory – and dropped each by the score of 2-1. Team awards went to MVP Lilia Gonzalez, Eagle Award winner Allison Cartee, and Coaches Award winner Alexandra Janssen.
Our grade 5 junior varsity B girls soccer team, coached by Anthony Wood and Jared Ramsey, finished the season just a game below .500 at 2-3. The team enjoyed victories over Castilleja and Girls Middle School; in the latter game, Harker won 5-3 in an exciting home win in front of a raucous crowd. Grace Hajjar and Dylan Williams captured Co-MVP honors from the team, while Grace F. Huang was presented with the Eagle Award and Carissa Nelson received the Coaches Award.
Middle School Basketball
Harker’s grade 7-8 boys basketball teams will resume their season after the close of the holiday break. The grade 8 varsity A team, coached by Joe Mentillo, is at the moment locked at .500 with a 4-4 record in league play. The grade 7-8 varsity B team, coached by Mike Delfino, is at present holding down first place in the league with a sterling 5-1 record. Even better, the team’s sole loss came in overtime in a 39-38 game, so grade 7-8 varsity B has not dropped a game in regulation so far this year. The grade 7 varsity B2 team, coached by Dan Pringle, is currently hanging in there at 3-3 in the league.
The grade 6 junior varsity A boys basketball team, coached by Greg Lawson, finished their year in second place in the league and then won second place a the WBAL tournament. Their final record was an amazing 9-2 with both losses coming at the hands of a tough Sacred Heart team. Over the entire season, Harker won most of its games in dominant fashion, winning by at least 20 points or more. Team MVP went to Jackson Williams. The Eagle Award went to Jason Peetz, and the Coaches Award to Zach Hoffman.
Harker’s grade 6 junior varsity B6 boys basketball team, coached by Steve Carroll, finished the season at 3-5 in league. The boys enjoyed exciting victories over Nueva, Keys and Crystal Springs, and gave well-deserved awards to Surya Gudapati (MVP), Carl Gross (Eagle Award) and Neil Ramaswamy (Coaches Award).
The grade 5 Junior Varsity B1 boys basketball team, coached by Terence Pellum, finished the season as league champs and WBAL Tournament champs with a final record of 9-0. The boys fought hard to win the league championship with a final league game victory over Sacred Heart by a score of 23-20. They played the very same Sacred Heart team in the finals of the WBAL tournament and won 26-21. The team awards went toAditya Gupta ( MVP), Jeffrey Liu (Eagle Award)and Asmit Kumar (Coaches Award).
The grade 5 Junior Varsity B2 boys basketball team, coached by Patrick Hightower, finished the season with a league record of 1-6. The boys had some very close games with Sacred Heart and Pinewood and steadily improved throughout the course of the season. The team awards went to Kevin Chen (MVP), Jai Bahri (Eagle Award ) and Kyle Li (Coaches Award ).
The grade 4 Junior Varsity C boys basketball team, coached by Jim McGovern, finished the season with a league record of 5-1, good enough to earn them Tri-Champions of the league! The boys enjoyed a very exciting season, only losing to a tough Pinewood team in their final game 19-25. The team awards went to Benjamin Soraire (MVP), Anmol Velagapudi (Eagle Award) and Andrew Chavez (Coaches Award).
Congratulations to all the LS/MS Early Winter sports teams for a phenomenal season and good luck to our G7 and G8 boys basketball players still in season!!
Thanks to a unique online poetry forum, grade 7 students in Mark Gelineau’s English class have gone poetically cyber – taking their literary studies to a whole new global, interactive and virtual level.
Using the forum, some 80 students have connected with roughly the same number of peers from the Nazarbayev Intellectual School (NIS) in Kazakhstan to discuss selected poetic works. The poetry exchange program has already generated well over 1,000 posts.
Gelineau created the forum in conjunction with Harker alumna Lauren Gutstein ’06, who currently works at the NIS school in Astana, one of a group of seven existing state funded selective schools for middle and high school aged students spread throughout major cities in Kazakhstan.
The largest of the Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union, Kazakhstan is prosperous and highly literate. Named after the president of the county, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the NIS schools have an international focus.
Through their online postings, students from both Harker and NIS share insights and observations about posted poems up for discussion. Currently, the forum consists of two poems: “Stopping by Woods” by Robert Frost and “Winter” by Kunanbaev Ibragim Abai, a well-known Kazakh poet.
Each poem was given a literature-based question for students to answer, as well as one that was more cultural in nature. Students at both schools used the questions as starting points to initiate their own discussions, now in process.
“This forum is a wonderful example of how well global education can enhance and enrich academic learning,” said Jennifer Walrod, Harker’s director of global education. “It directly ties into Mark’s poetry unit and Lauren taught it through her ESL classes as it gave her students an opportunity to communicate with native speakers.”
Before participating in the online discussions Harker and NIS students had studied both poems, which are themed around winter, in their respective classrooms. While the Frost poem contains very peaceful verses, the Abai poem conveys a much darker mood.
According to Gelineau, the Frost piece is a lovely poem about pausing to watch a patch of forest fill with snow. By contrast, he said the Kazakh poet offers up a much bleaker view, where rather than something to be enjoyed in tranquility, winter is to be struggled against.
Using the contrasting poems as springboards for discussion, Harker and NIS students created and posted their own stanzas, seeking to enhance or alter the established moods depicted by the two poets. The students then discussed their newly written works with one another by regularly logging onto the site and keeping conversations running smoothly.
“I love the fact that the poetry forum is a curriculum-based project that integrates a global perspective. It is also interesting for the kids to be able to communicate with peers from a part of the world that we do not learn much about at all,” observed Walrod.
“This project has been an incredible success!” added Gelineau.